


Kumo no Mine

by motorghost



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Cooking, Cottagecore, Established Relationship, Farmcore, Festivals, Fluff, Gardening, Happy McHanzo, M/M, Nature, Nostalgia, Not really though, Outdoor Sex, Seasons, Slice of Life, Summer, Transcience, farm life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 12:50:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20008582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/motorghost/pseuds/motorghost
Summary: Hanzo and Jesse spend a summer at Hanzo's childhood country escape: a farm house in the mountains.





	Kumo no Mine

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically Japanese farm-core and incredibly self-indulgent and so, so pleasurable to write. I was heavily inspired by this Chinese farmer/cook’s youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoC47do520os_4DBMEFGg4A  
> Check her out, it’s incredibly interesting and soothing! Also it will probably make you hungry.
> 
> WARNINGS: depictions of Farm Violence, i.e., Jesse kills a farm animal for their food. If that bugs you, totally understand. It kind of bugs Jesse, too.
> 
> DISCLAIMER:
> 
> You have my permission to podfic, translate or remix my work, make fan-art—anything that qualifies as transformative work. All I ask is that you share it with me so I can enjoy it too!
> 
> What you do NOT have my permission to do is wholesale copy and repost my work(s) to a different platform, such as a third-party app that profits from free fan labor. If you are reading this on an app like that, I assure you that Ao3's on mobile is robust, has a dark mode skin, and isn't trying to scam you by offering premium services that change nothing.
> 
> (If you are an author, feel free to copypasta this disclaimer onto your own works. If fan fiction isn't kept totally free, it will eventually cease to exist.)

**Kumo no Mine**  
_Kumo (雲) means clouds, Mine (峰) means peak. Kumo no Mine (雲の峰) means a peak of clouds. This word comes from the sight of clouds towering like the peak of a mountain. Refers to cumulonimbus clouds often created by the hot air of summer._

`

Small lamps dot a small pocket of life on a great green mountain. The hottest night of the summer. Hanzo can see the stars every time he looks up to check that his partner is succeeding in his assigned task. Not in a million years would he ever have imagined taking someone like this -- this tall, hairy, more-American-than-American, middle-aged cowboy -- back to the country nest of his childhood summers. Wind through the forest like an endless line of voices. Jesse’s own knife carving off the skins of young bamboo shoots they gathered that morning. Soft black cotton yukata with his families’ emblem. No one around for miles. 

Hanzo finishes his glass of plum wine. The insects are growing insistent and it is just too hot to continue. There is no rush. The shoots will still be there tomorrow.

He offers his hand to Jesse, who takes it and follows him inside; Hanzo’s sandals tapping the stone steps, Jesse’s bare feet almost silent.

`|

Light blue misty morning. The shoots are shucked and trimmed and rinsed in the mountain stream, now boiling in a huge iron vat. Jesse smokes from the same clay pipe that Hanzo’s grandfather once used. He’s even sitting by the same window, looking at the rain. In many ways, Jesse reminds Hanzo of his grandfather, but he has not said this to Jesse.

The oven room still smells like all of it. Pork, miso, soy, a thousand fruits and vegetables and herbs. He can pick out memories like a perfect inventory, more clearly and more precisely than ever before, even when this place was only one, two, five years behind him. Genji running after the cat. Father helping grandfather dig for potatoes. Mother and grandmother tending to their own conjures over the vats, the baskets, the steam. Hanzo chopping or sorting or cutting.

The shoots boil. Hanzo mixes a few pieces with sugar in a wooden bowl next to Jesse by the window. This close, he can smell the roses climbing along the sides. He can hear the freshly-sheared sheep calling to each other from beyond the garden walls. He can feel the warm brush of Jesse’s hand across his back; not invitation nor request; a simple reminder, an appreciation, and something that is now so intrinsic to who Jesse is, like how the cool morning breeze flows through his sleeves without being asked; it is simply the nature of wind.

When the shoots are done boiling, Jesse shows Hanzo a small figure he made out of the shoot leaves -- a small man with a leaf for a blade. Hanzo grins without thought, tells him they’ll be cutting the remaining bamboo into squid-like shapes now. Scoring and then laying them out to dry. He takes Jesse’s hand and leads him back into the house to show him where the good knives are kept. A small dog follows, wiry and brown and panting.

`| `-

They eat at a great wooden table by the garden. Chopped shoots with shredded roast pork, soy sauce and chili. Pork fat and vegetables fried with shoots, all diced and tossed with rice. Pickled shoots with daikon and carrot and potato and cabbage. Simmered shoots with bonito and dashi alongside roast fish. The dried squid-shoots are still slowly roasting in the pit; the fermenting shoots are still in their clay home beneath the earth in the hill. The cat licks the fish carcass by their feet. The dog chews fresh bones further down the path. There will be good things to eat for weeks to come.

Hanzo refills Jesse’s sake cup. They talk about work and nature and current events. Neither of them have yet mentioned Hanzo’s past, the past they currently eat and sleep and labor within. But neither feels the need to bring it up. Like the angles of the trees, Hanzo’s shapes say it all. The way he moves and talks and decides in this space tell Jesse all he’d ever need to know. And if Hanzo wants to say more, that will be in a moment of his choosing. Very quickly, Jesse comes to understand that this is a place ruled by the seasons, and he’s never been one to argue with divine timing.

They spend the whole night out in the small house beyond the garden wall, the space Jesse keeps referring to as ‘the gazebo’ -- a round roofed hut with open sides and insect netting and a view of the whole mountain valley. They smoke out on the grass and Jesse tells stories about good coyotes and evil men. Hanzo dots their pillows with homemade jasmine oil. A single cot shares their tired sighs, their soft sleeping breaths. When Hanzo opens his eyes in the middle of the night at the sound of some passing animal, he sends a small prayer to the local kami, and none of the animals are harmed come morning.

`| `- `|

Hanzo washes the plucked body of a wild duck that he shot with his bow. The bamboo fountain feeds water past a broad slate slab, runs down to be distributed to the ground flowers. He puts the bird in an iron pot with berries, nuts, tied grass and spices, then fills it with water and closes it up with a wooden lid.  
  
Tomatoes and cucumbers and green leafy plants of all kinds are ready alongside the narrow garden paths. He picks just enough to convince the plants to grow more. The hardened dirt memorizes the outlines of his feet; or else it never forgot.

He chops up the loin of the sheep Jesse killed in the morning with the sun setting before him. He remembers the way Jesse held the sheep in his arms, sung to it until it was half-asleep, stroked it like it was a pet before suddenly snapping its neck. Hanzo can still see the distant look in Jesse’s eyes after; he didn’t expect him to be so affected. He knows that Jesse grew up on a ranch and he is more than used to killing. But there's no telling why or when these things happen to men like them. The sight of blood alone can take Hanzo straight into the sensation of drowning. Other times it’s like brushing away a fly.

Chopsticks mix the meat with chives, onion, oil, salt and soy. Hanzo hears Jesse walk inside as he carefully folds the mash inside its rice dough blanket. Nothing disturbs his technique, not even when Jesse wraps his arms around him from behind, stuffs his hairy face against Hanzo’s neck. Hums to him the same tune he’d hummed to the sheep.

`| `- `| _

While Jesse is still sleeping, only the suggestion of sun, Hanzo reads out loud to him his favorite poems. He’s finished maybe six by the time Jesse smiles, smooths his big hand across the white futon. A dozen more until he opens his eyes; little flecks of amber to join the morning light. 

When Hanzo feels like it, he puts the book aside and sits with Jesse’s head close to his hip. He strokes his hair, combs. Feels the edges of his face with fingertips. How soft the mountain has made them both. How healthy Jesse looks, ripe and firm and glowing from the inside out. He’s never seen him so happy.  
  
When Hanzo starts to speak of the transience of summer, Jesse paws inside his robe, kneads at his thighs. He pries them apart to nose and lick in Hanzo’s creases. Hanzo grips Jesse’s hair as the man tongues the space where hair meets his shaft, grips a little tighter when Jesse mouths up the length of him. Only when Jesse is lapping at the head like a dripping fruit does Hanzo look down, jaw loose. Then Jesse meets his eyes, grips the base of him, suckles around the head and starts bowing up and down with the same diligence and thoroughness that makes him such a worthwhile partner in every possible respect.  
  
It's not the first day they've gotten a late start to their chores, but it is the first day that Hanzo doesn't think about it.

`| `- `| _ _

The dog’s puppies watch as Hanzo and Jesse chop wood and score chestnuts. The chestnuts go into the outdoor clay oven, which is shaped like the head of a frog -- the little wooden door that covers its mouth has a handle shaped like a fly. Inside the house, jars upon jars of preserves, jams, pickles and sauces and marinades stand in happy waiting. Mushrooms dry on the stone steps. Sunflowers bow, willows wave. Peanuts and sunflower seeds are already roasting in a fire Jesse built into the hillside. The trees in the mountain’s path are full of melon, citrus and berries, too many for two men to ever pick, even if they lived a hundred summers on that mountain.  
  
When Hanzo suggests that they take some of their resources down to the village for the festival, Jesse kisses him for a long time.

`| `- `| _ _ _

Jesse looks so handsome in his festival kimono that Hanzo can hardly concentrate on packaging and transporting and donating their goods. He catches himself staring while the stands thank them for their gifts with tokens and liquor. He stares while they eat yakitori and mizu manju, while they drink warmed homemade sake and homemade beer. While they watch performers and musicians and while Jesse catches thrown candy to ensure they have many more years of this kind of luck.

When it is time for the mikoshi, Hanzo is drunk enough for bad memories to float inside. They are invited to participate and the heavy wood is like a knife in his shoulder. Jesse makes a joke about how Baptists always told him that God was carrying him, not the other way around, but Hanzo can only feel the sweat pouring down from his headband, can only focus on the chanting that carries them on. He is afraid that if he looks at Jesse, he will see Genji in his old headband, miserably carrying the heavy palanquin, as if he’d die just to be somewhere else.

After they leave the mikoshi at the shrine, Jesse seems just as ruffled as Hanzo -- he doubtlessly had to squat just to help carry alongside the villagers. And they are both tired of the obligated participation; the general politeness of the small mountain clan is something they both value but eventually wish to throw off like a too-tight tie. So Jesse takes his hand and leads him up to the shrine where they both give their thanks and write their names on a lantern. Then Jesse takes him back up the mountain, they shed their clothes and walk into the river. They can still hear the drums from the festival down below. When the moon comes out above the trees, Hanzo traps Jesse against the grassy ledge and kisses him breathless.  
  
Then he starts singing an old traditional song in his grated, brassy, mostly on-key baritone and Jesse laughs and takes him home and shares with him the candy he caught. Too tired for sex, they drink cooled mint tea and let the pups curl up around their feet and listen to the wind until, facing each other, they let the linen comfort them into a long and dreamless sleep, which was all Hanzo prayed for. 

`| `- `| _ _ _ ˘

When it is time to leave, Hanzo turns over the grounds to the winter caretakers: a young woman and her grandmother who’d worked another farm all summer. The stores are logged and organized, the animals counted and measured. Repairs noted and plans for more established. Lines and numbers swim before Hanzo’s eyes like a foreign language; a strange feeling after living so long without concepts like money.

Before they go, Jesse surprises him with two horses. Hanzo prepares a picnic and they ride slow into the mountain. Hanzo picks kuchinashi and other flowers to arrange for the farmer and her grandmother when they get back. Jesse goes on about all of the things he’s loved about the summer, all the things he’s learned, things that Hanzo both does and could never expect. Jesse talks about how he never knew the value and versatility of soy sauce. He didn’t know a thing like killing a sheep could still make him cry. He never thought he’d ever like poetry, let alone look forward to it being read to him. He never thought he’d see Hanzo so happy in his own country, let alone a childhood home.

He lets Hanzo collect himself before suggesting they dismount to be with the river one last time. They both bow to the stone marker for the water god. Hanzo watches the fish and the eel and the turtles. He watches the pattern of leaf shadows sway across Jesse’s face. Some part of him thinks it is a mistake to leave at midday, when the high summer sun makes everything saturated, resplendent. Some part of him thinks it is a mistake to leave at all. A wind too cool for the season blows through the trees and he clutches the sleeve of his hakama. He looks to the skull on Jesse’s arm and thinks that maybe, if he stops breathing, he will make this moment last forever.  
  
Then Jesse points, mutters. A snake is sunning itself on a broad stone across the river. They both crouch near the edge, watch its scales sing in the light. Then Jesse tells him that the snakes in New Mexico are much less beautiful, but that he would be honored if Hanzo would spend the next summer with him there.  
  
They return to their horses. Jesse takes something red and Hanzo feels his heart cascade across his face -- Jesse’s serape. He hasn’t seen it since the summer’s start.

Then Jesse takes his hand and leads him to a tiny clearing, the kind of soft grassy hideaway where deer keep their young, lays it down and Hanzo goes with him. He takes oil from the basket and kisses all along Jesse’s chest and neck and face as he opens him up, whispers to him in his own language, words that Jesse is beginning to truly understand. When Jesse rides him, heels dug into the earth and broad mouth grinning, Hanzo’s eyes expand forever on the brilliant blue sky, the mountainous clouds and Jesse’s shining brown skin, flecks of pollen in his sun-kissed hair, laughter and moans on the tip of his tongue. When he finishes, he bucks into Jesse, gives him everything he has, until the man’s shuddering gasps turn into over-sensitive winces and heaven comes softly back down to the forest floor.

Before they head back, they enjoy one last meal in the shade of the trees: plum cakes, green tea, shiitake mushroom dumplings. When they leave the house for good, only the cat watches them go, sitting on the path outside the gate. Hanzo looks out the back window of the car that takes them down the mountain and sees that mountain of cloud hanging above the house. He takes Jesse's hand just to hold.


End file.
